Merry Chrismas Hatkes!

To add some more craziness into the mix now we have discovered that we are expecting again. Yeah!!! Hatke #3 is due around or after Christmas depending on which due date we go by. So the fun part is we will try and do some belly pictures as we progress.

I certainly feel like I am pooching out arleady. I guess by baby #3 your stomach muscles are like, "oh yeah this again. We don't have to work for the next year or so! "

So every pregnancy brings me new resolutions.
Here are my resolutions for this pregnancy.

1. Two eggs a day.
2. One cup of whole milk also daily.
3. Walking a mile a day.
4. Drinking a cup of Rasberry Leaf tea every evening.
5. Limiting refined sugar to special occasions.


There you are I suppose number three will be the hardest to do. Scheduling in a brisk especially with the two kids. When I walk, I like to WALK. And with the girls, an amble is about the highest speed attained. Still today we walked over to the Flippens house together and Zita walked the whole way .

Ahh, lastly I finally got the first of the garden planed today and that was a real load off of my mind. I also discovered by accident that the grime on my kitchen window I have thought was permamnet for years actually came off with baking soda and a lot of scrubbing. So I spent an hour the other morning scrubbing the whole damn thing till it shone. What a feeling of accompishment. I have angrily stared at that grimy window while washing dishes for so long. Who knew it could look so much better?

At last the pics are working again!!! Here are some easter pics.

haircuts for the woolsies

Yikes! Sorry its been so long. My poor mother who was visiting us came down with pneumonia and finally thanks to all the prayers, my dad's beef stock, and the great doc at the FR emergency room is back in California finishing her recovery.

What have I been up to since then? Well lots of laundry and as if I didn't wash enough stuff every day I have added wool to my list. Beth and I decided to try to make matresses for the girls so we bought all this wool from sheep farmer who was happy to get rid of it. Now comes the hard part. We have been washing it in big plasic bins in the front yard with really hot water and dish detergent. Then we have been spreading it on the front porch to dry in the sun. This gets all the strong sheepy smell out and leaves a nice "wooly" smell too in addition to turning it from a brownish yellow to a beautiful creamy color. Wool sure is cool stuff. And the kids have been having a fun time too. We just have to keep Zita from throwing rocks in the bins.



Beth took some pics but I have to get them off of her camera.

p.s. SHERRY, I didn't know you were preggo!!!!!!! YEAH!

Wow, I was struck by everyone's survey's at how none of us really iron. I remember my grandfather used to spend like an hour ironing a shirt. One time he caught me doing one for my dad and he about had a fainting fit he was so ashamed of my skills. I still am a lousy ironer. Maybe this is one of those things like cheese-making that is becoming a lost skill.

I can just see my mother-in-law who is among the few profficent and regular ironers left out there, out at the Phrophetstown museum in twenty years at their new 1950s housewife display, showing young women the lost art of ironing.

I guess there is still hope. My mother, who is visiting, was apalled that after my iron broke a year ago it hadn't been replaced. She bought me a new one.

Survey

Okay stole this one from both my SIL's.

Homemaking. . . .


Aprons – Y/N?
Usually only when I bake or make something with a sauce. Now Steiner would say I wear it to "sheild my inner forces." No I'm really just trying to sheild my clothing.

Baking – Favorite thing to bake:
Bread, blueberry muffins, chocolate chip cookies, cakes.

Clothesline – Y/N?
Damn Straight.

Donuts – Have you ever made them?
Yes. Once when I was twelve. We won't relive that little mishap.

Every day – One homemaking thing you do every day:
Only one? haha. Okay make dinner.

Freezer – Do you have a separate deep freeze?
I wish. But I do steal freezer space from the basement family.

Garbage Disposal – Y/N?
I used to own chickens which would be a yes. Now we just compost the kitchen waste.

Handbook – What is your favorite homemaking resource?
Nourishing Traditions and Pattern Language

Ironing – Love it or hate it?
hate it. But thanks to my laundry line I don't have to do it anymore. Everything dries without wrinkles with the exception of a few linen things.

Junk drawer – Y/N? Where is it?
I have tried to not own one of these but they just evolve. There is no use fighting it. But I draw the line at getting a kitchen junk drawer organizer. The whole point of the junk drawer is ruffling through all the crud.

Kitchen: Design & Decorating?
Um sort of Italian counrty meets california meets old-time american farm kitchen. I just try and have everything I have in there be either functional or beautiful and ideally both.

Love – What is your favorite part of homemaking?
baking bread--the laundry line, both require a repetetive action that lets my mind wander. . .

Mop – Y/N?
In Italy when we had tile floors I did.. But with cruddy linoleum there is no substitute for a good hands and knees scrubbing.

Nylons – Wash by hand or in the washing machine?
I don't own nylons. Its cotton tights in the winter and au natural in the summer. I swear I destroy nylons just by looking at them. One time we made nylon in chemistry class. I've felt a little leary of it ever since.

Oven – Do you use the window or open the oven to check?
both. this is a silly question.

Pizza – What do you put on yours?
I put garlic sometimes. Also olives, caramilized onions, and scallions. peppers. feta and pesto when I have them on hand.

Quiet – What do you do during the day when you get a quiet moment?
I waste my time with stupid surverys. . . seriously though, in the summer I sit out in my yard under a nice tree and drink iced tea. In the winter its usually hot tea or chai on the couch with a book.

Recipe card box – Y/N?
Sort of. I have a big cigar box full of recipes mostly from my dad and the internet that I call "The fat duck cook book." It is totally disorganized.

Style of house –
I think it is called a "rambler" I like to call it "box."

Tablecloths and napkins – Y/N?
cloth napkins. yes tablecloths on an off

Under the kitchen sink – Organized or toxic wasteland?
organized sort of --the only toxic thing I use is bleach and I use it so rarely that I keep it down in the basement. I clean almost everything upstairs with baking soda/ vinegar/ and borax--oh and dish soap.

Vacuum – How many times per week?
about once. in the summer more often because we track in more dirt going barefoot all the time .

Wash – How many loads of laundry do you do per week?
Gosh. a ton. probably a load a day. more when I'm using diapers.

X’s – Do you keep a daily list of things to do that you cross off?
No but this is one of the excellent habits of my husbands that i need to aquire. We do sort of try and organize our day over our cofee in the morning.

Yard – Y/N? Who does what?
I weed, rake, compost, and mulch. I mow about fifty percent of the time and plant the garden. Ben chops up wood, hauls big heavy tree stumps around, does the other fifty percent of the mowing and helps with the fences and burns stuff. He also had a very sucsessful melon patch one year. Angelica pulls over rocks to find bugs and makes mud pies. Zita walks on burning logs and takes rides in the wheelbarrow.

Zzz’s – What is your last homemaking task for the day before going to bed?
I do the dishes and soak the oats for breakfast. --one time I set the breakfast table the night before. That was a really cool day.

Uncovering Luthor's dung Heap.

As the result of the whole family having a real killer of a virus, I went to mass by myself this past Palm Sunday and had gift of sitting thru mass without the usual interruptions that come with small children (of course these interruptions are much more efficaious oppurties for grace!) .

The palm sunday liturgy is always one of my favorites. Its like that final build up in an orchestra peice that lets you know the climax is about to begin. Its richness, the palms, the incense, the holy water, and most of all the Gospel of Luke acted out as a drama, are all beckoning us to begin the final stage of Christ's life during Holy Week.

One passage in the Gospel struck me in particular. It is in Christ's speech to the weeping women.

"For behold the days shall come wherin they shall say, "Blessed are the barren and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck. They shall then begin to say to the mountains, Fall upon us, and to the hills: Cover us. For if in the green wood they do these things what shall be done in the dry? "

Sobering thoughts. Christ is reminding us on his trail to Calvary that we will share in his suffering. "in the misdst of life we are in death." These words from an eleventh century Lenten chant also remind us of this. But the answer is not depair. It is not that Christ simply covered up all that death with a white blanket of snow--as Luther would have us beleive, so that God no longer looks on our sinfulness. This is indeed a depairing Christianity.

It is not a covering up -rather it is a tranformation. Christ took on a human body and human nature and in humility joined our race. Humility -in another book I was reading of late I ran across the root meaning of the word humility: hummus. Compost, or rotting-decomposed-matter. How odd, I thought, that Luther should try and think of us as dung heaps covered by snow. That Christ, covers up the ugliness. How far from the truth. Rather it is in our very rottedness, that we are transformed. This is our call to humility. Therin is the mystery. That just as the scraps from my kitchen, the manure from a horse, and a pile of leaves are transformed into a hummus, a soil that is life-giving, so our souls in Christ are transformed. Christ does not cover up our sinfulness, he transforms it. He takes it and "makes all things new."

Just as my compost enriches and feeds my garden and becomes frutiful plants--so we too can be transformed thanks to the blood that is spilled out with such love today.